ivyinkvine

Ivy Inkvine - Basic Art
2013-04-21 13:16:50 (UTC)

Exp. Watercolours #1 - Major Brushes Watercolours

I thought I'd give a 'Major Brushes' watercolour set review. The sum for 12 blocks of colour was £2.40. When you consider that a W&N Cotman half pan is £2.10 at least, that's either value for money or the paint is very poor quality.

Box:

The colour blocks come in a solid tin box. I think the cost could cover the tin alone, personally. Inside, the paints are held in a flimsy plastic mould that isn't attached to the tin. Plenty of recycling potential after the paints have gone.

Paints:

These are the kind we painted with in school. Little hard bricks that take ages to get any colour onto your brush.

The French Ultramarine had pieces of unknown fibre once the paint was liquid. They were quite large, and would be difficult to cover or disguise in just pure watercolour. My advise would be not to burn through any good arts/watercolour paper with these paints: they cover the page but that's about it. My purpose was for use in an art journal, so quality didn't matter to me, as I'll probably layer something else over them.

The crimson isn't crimson at all, it's more pink. That leaves the entire set without a decent yellow or a decent red. Plenty of blues, greens, and earth colours, but no good red or a reliable yellow. The crimson did contribute with the Prussian Blue to make a delightful violet, but that was the highlight of the set, if I'm honest.

Misc:

These paints take a good few minutes *each block* to loosen up. In terms of a source of raw pigment, they're darned handy. If you want to use them out of the box, you're probably going to be disappointed: they're very hard to use, the texture isn't smooth or pleasant, and the colour palette is very restricted. If you paint flowers, put the £2.40 to a discount W&N Cotman set on eBay or Amazon.

Addi tonal Uses:

For me, I can use these paints for some projects. They could be used to rough washes in art journals, or broken up and used as a thicker paint, or to tint a medium of your choice. Fancy a tinted gesso and don't have pastels? Try scraping some of these dry paints into the mix and stirring well (note: I haven't tried this! It's just a suggestion if you've wound up with these and want a new use for them. It might not work).

I may scrape out a small amount of paint and combine it with a gum arabic essence and honey, to see if the texture and lustre improves.

Conclusion:

These paints could put you off watercolours. Each paint wanted to be an individual, in that they sometimes wouldn't blend despite the amount of water added. It's a shame they're so hard to use, and the colour selection is strange. Just bear in mind these aren't great paints, but if you think you can use them for a mixed-media project or something, £2.40 isn't a bad price.




Ad: